On March 10, 2013 Michael A. Fletcher writes in The Washington Post:
This prosperous community is the picture of the good and ever longer life — just what policymakers have in mind when they say that raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare is a fair way to rein in the nation’s troublesome debt.
The county’s plentiful and well-tended golf courses teem with youthful-looking retirees. The same is true on the county’s 41 miles of Atlantic Ocean beaches, abundant tennis courts and extensive network of biking and hiking trails.
The healthy lifestyles pay off. Women here can expect to live to be nearly 83, four years longer than they did just two decades earlier, according to research at theUniversity of Washington. Male life expectancy is more than 78 years, six years longer than two decades ago.
But in neighboring Putnam County, life is neither as idyllic nor as long.
Incomes and housing values are about half what they are in St. Johns. And life expectancy in Putnam has barely budged since 1989, rising less than a year for women to just over 78. Meanwhile, it has crept up by a year and a half for men, who can expect to live to be just over 71, seven years less than the men living a few miles away in St. Johns.
A reason for greater life expectancy for the wealthy class is due to the sense of economic security afforded by viable income-producing capital portfolios, and less stress from the necessity of non- or under-capitalized to continue to work, often at creatively unrewarding toil jobs, well into their old age.
You do not have be educated, experienced, or have any other qualifications except that you are breathing to be a owner of a corporation run with professional management, and to receive a dividend income and capital gain value, which can be cashed in. With a viable income-producing capital estate one can support a family and engage in the leisure life they desire, whether that be an unproductive use of one’s human potential or a creative application. The wealthy ownership class enjoys such means to live their lives. Those dependent solely on a job do not.
